Somewhere Quiet

Windows open, and the susurration of wind in the tree tops is a pleasant sound. Lonesome train across the river in Kentucky woke me, sometime after midnight, but when it fades out of hearing, the silence, once I kill the breaker for the refrigerator, is almost complete. I sit in the dark more than I ever used to, but it's not depression, it's more of a reverie. A kind of meditation in which you see yourself from a remove. When you stand back, careful not to step on the bodies, and examine what it is, exactly, that you've done. You can always argue that you were on the wrong foot and it caused a stumble. I don't need an excuse anymore, I just poke around. If you call rooster, I'll hook up the plow. Further, despite some bad reviews, I'd call that last effort a success, if I understand that term correctly. Fuck a bunch of bilge-water, not winning is better than winning. At least you learn something. Also, and I can't help noticing, history has a way of repeating itself. God, I can't believe who I used to be.The world, right? What passes as the world. Still no phone, and their self-imposed deadline is tomorrow, and, of course, it's supposed to rain. My old buddy Poggio Bracciolini showed up again today (that's three times in a year) in the London Review. In a piece about a book written about a book that doesn't exist. De Tribus Impostoribus or "The Atheist's Bible" which labeled as imposters Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad. Despite not existing it still made the Vatican's Index Librorum of books you shouldn't read. This was the gold-standard of publicity, in the early years of printing, as soon as a book made the list, the guys in Holland would print copies. Everything was printed in Latin. Starting a rumor that someone was the secret author of De Tribus was serious scandal and Poggio's name was mentioned. He had written a couple of books, one of them a book of jokes about monks. He hated monks, called them stupid and dirty. This from the number one papal scribe for five Popes. Then, unbelievably, in the late afternoon, I'm reading an essay about the loss of handwriting, and Poggio is mentioned again, as having had a beautiful hand. Which he did, and the way his pages looked affected early printing: page lay-out, the lower case, the look of the thing. And I've looked at his actual writing, with a magnifying glass, I know the direction of the strokes. And he's mentioned again? Poggio? He was my secret. I thought he was my secret. Finally, the phone company guy, Matt, shows up. He asks some questions, agrees it's their problem, then takes apart the NID (Network Interface Device) and gets back to the bare wire. Still dead. He has some sort of resistance reading thing and, after hooking it up to the bare wires, says that the problem is 1730 feet done the line. I tell him that would be down on Upper Twin. We'd both looked at that section of line and it looked fine, but he'd said he'd go see. Phone rang just before five and he'd found it. It was in the middle of the span between two poles; too much slack in the phone-line and in the big wings 10 days ago, that the line had blown upwards and touched the power lines and it had burned right through the top of the phone line. You couldn't see it from the ground. He said he'd get them to put in a new section of line tomorrow. He'd essentially taped the wires back together and he thought it would hold for the night. I'd better send now.